Wide-field-of-view (WFOV) night vision goggle

Abstract

The United States' armed forces continue to be presented with increased challenges in adverse operational environments with increasing risk and complexity - especially at night. To ensure continued operational success and battlefield superiority during darkness, our armed forces must be equipped with night vision (NV) systems providing increased situational awareness. Doing so will significantly enhance threat detection and engagement, as well as survivability, thus ensuring greater mission success. Northrop Grumman Electro-Optical Systems (EOS) continues to develop its Wide Field of View (WFOV) image intensification (I²) night vision system for ground forces. This system will provide a significant increase in visual coverage enabling US forces to continue "to own the night". Until now, NV systems have typically been limited to a 40-degree field of view (FOV), vertically and horizontally. This limited FOV reduces off-axis detection, restricts an individual soldier's recognition and engagement capabilities and hinders added peripheral vision. To counter this operational deficiency, EOS proposes the Wide Field of View (WFOV) night vision binocular. The WFOV system will have a 70-degree horizontal FOV, with a 55-degree vertical FOV. The increased FOV will result in increased situational awareness of soldiers' surrounding environment (including terrain, hazards, threat, etc) during normal night operations. It will also allow for rapid and safer movement, especially in MOUT operations. Additionally, the increased visual coverage of large areas will enable soldiers to detect and engage targets faster and with greater reliability. The WFOV binocular will significantly enhance survivability, threat detection and engagement, and hence, greater mission success rate.